Question about Merits

[NinjaBob]

Can you still get the merit for having a character for more than a year if your character has been playin for a year and you changed their name from bob-j to bobby.

And when the merit system is placed into the game does it start then, for example if u already met the required amount of kills before the merit system came out would you get the award then or have to start over and work from 0.